Posts Tagged Piketty’s Capital

I’ve been dragged back into the Piketty melee by a review of Piketty from ‘New Institutional’ superstars Daren Acemoglu & James Robinson. Unsurprisingly, they focus on the institutional aspects of Piketty’s work, charging that his framework doesn’t pay much attention to institutions. I disagree:

The claim that Piketty’s work is ahistorical and ainstitutional is an odd one which is easily belied. For a start, Piketty states that the truth of r > g“depends, however, on the shocks to which capital is subject, as well as on what public policies and institutions are put in place to regulate the relationship between capital and labor.” Piketty’s obvious awareness of institutions is presumably the reason he spends four chapters documenting the kinds of political institutions that might be put in place to counteract a rise in inequality.

They dispute Piketty’s use of ‘general laws’, but they misinterpret the laws in numerous ways – the biggest mistake is the idea they are even supposed to be ‘general laws’, rather than empirically established tendencies:

[Piketty] is simply not seeking to uncover general laws of capitalism. What he is doing is identifying the conditions under which inequality will tend to increase, asking whether they are empirically reasonable, and making predictions based on this framework. His first law is just an identity; his second law is an “asymptotic law”, subject to a number of qualifiers, which describes the direction in which the capital/income ratio will evolve at any one time. As for r > g, he himself states that it “is a contingent historical proposition, which is true in some periods and political contexts and not in others.”

I’ve been a vocal critic of people who do not read Piketty or read him poorly, and I don’t want to be a hypocrite with AR’s book Why Nations Fail, which I have not yet read. But I am pessimistic that it follows the theme of their review: posit a theory in which institutions take centre stage; repeat a superficial history of a series of countries in turn, interpreted from that viewpoint; stick some econometrics in. Or, as Branko Milanovic called it, “Wikipedia entries with regressions”. I’m genuinely asking people who’ve read the book to persuade me that this is not the case.

I have a new post on Piketty on Pieria, pointing out potential problems interpreting his premises and propositions (sorry, it started organically):

I recently wrote about the numerous misconceptions over Thomas Piketty’s use and definition of capital in his bookCapital in the 21st Century. Sadly, it seems there are a number of other common, equally important mischaracterisations of Piketty’s model floating around. Here I will consider 5 of the most widespread and show, using direct quotes from Piketty himself, why they are off the mark. The first 3 are simple errors of interpretation with regards to Piketty’s theoretical framework, while the latter 2 are problems with how people have responded to Piketty in general. Although the latter 2 are inevitably more subjective, they are still important for trying to understand and reframe the debate between Piketty and his critics.

Each point gives the common misinterpretation of Piketty’s work, and counters it. For example, one of the most important points (IMO) is this one:

2. ‘Fundamental laws’ of capitalism?

The claim: Piketty’s ‘fundamental laws of capitalism’ are not fundamental at all.

The reality: Although calling them ‘laws’ is misleading, at no point does Piketty claim that his laws are inviolable. They are instead tendencies (with the exception of the first law, which is just an accounting identity) which push capital’s share of income in a certain direction over time, but can be counteracted by any number of things, and only take hold over a long timespan.

Hopefully this will be a useful resource for when people who haven’t read the book (or worse, have read it but clearly either rushed or lack reading comprehension) repeat silly canards about it.

I have a new post on Pieria, where I finally get round to commenting on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century. My focus is on capital itself, how Piketty defines this and whether or not critics such as Jamie Galbraith are right to attack him for his choice of definition:

An important but perhaps under-discussed aspect of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century is Piketty’s definition of capital itself, and the implications this has for his thesis and its critics. Capital is a notoriously tricky to define concept, and many have taken issue with Piketty’s definition and the framework he builds around it. Typically, the implication is that a more Correct understanding of capital leads to vastly different conclusions to Piketty’s, especially with regards to his conclusions on inequality.

The verdict is that Piketty’s definition of capital is a lot more nuanced than critics make out, and typically (though not always) their critique just reflects a pet peeve of theirs, whether this is human capital, the CCCs or what have you. It’s not that Piketty’s definition is ‘correct’, or that it chimes well with other historical usages of the term (such as Marx’s); it’s merely that Piketty’s own definition is sufficient for showing what he wants to show: the dynamics of inequality under capitalism.

I’m also not really sure about Paul Krugman’s contention that Piketty “relies mainly on conventional, mainstream economics” – sure, he uses some mainstream concepts, but begrudgingly, and only as one angle of support for his broader historical, political and statistical analysis. This analysis stands or falls apart from frameworks like the production function, marginal productivity theory or the Solow Growth Model, even if some economists are eager to interpret it entirely within such frameworks. The fact is that while Piketty’s work cannot be construed as purely ‘heterodox’ or ‘mainstream’, it’s definitely far closer to how economics should look in the future: holistic, empirical, and using mathematics only when needed. Hopefully economists of all stripes can recognise this instead of focusing too much on unimportant details.